ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 Biological membranes are essential for all live cells because separation of cells, and environments makes it feasible to dissipate chemical energy and drive the cells to maintain an inflow of negative entropy and thus life. Our understanding of biomembranes has largely been developed within the approximate framework of the modified fluid mosaic model, which was first proposed in 1972. Due to the complicated lipid composition and domain organization in cell membranes, quantitative study of a membrane protein together with a few layers of lipid molecules around it has not been possible. Our biochemical and biophysical tools for studying lipid membranes have been leaping forward, but remain inadequate to provide quantitative understandings of even a very small patch of cell membrane with sufficient molecular resolutions in time and space. In the new era of membrane biology, how to meet such challenges in resolutions becomes a fascinating but rather challenging theme in biophysics and cell biology. Multiple different technologies have been developed in recent years, even though we are still far away from the ultimate goal of resolving individual lipids around individual membrane proteins in real time. This chapter will discuss some of these challenges and then briefly introduce the new techniques to be explained in later chapters.
